


Motorcycle Logic

by EmperorNortonII



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Content Warning: Cutting, F/F, Femslash February 2019, Friends to Lovers, Reasonably Canon Compliant, Set in 2002-2005, Sherry Birkin's Life Was Always Kind of Terrible, lots of internal monologuing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 01:30:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmperorNortonII/pseuds/EmperorNortonII
Summary: Sherry can't figure out whether she wants to be Claire, be like Claire, or be with Claire.





	Motorcycle Logic

**Author's Note:**

> If you're new to this fandom because of the RE2 remake, then I have to apologize now, because this turned into sort of a continuity nightmare on me. This contains plot elements from _RE2, RE4, Revelations 2, Degeneration_ , and _RE6_ , and I have no idea how much sense it'll make if you aren't familiar with some or all of them. Continuity notes for the curious and/or obsessive like me can be found on my [Tumblr](http://emperor-norton-ii.tumblr.com/post/182724348040/motorcycle-logic-emperornortonii-biohazard).
> 
> This is not in the same rough continuity as any of my other RE stories on AO3.

_There's no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on_  
_And you've just gotta keep on keeping on_  
_Gotta keep on going, looking straight out on the road_  
_Can't worry about what's behind you_  
_Or what's coming for you, further up the road_  


\- First Aid Kit, "My Silver Lining"

* * *

On the morning of Sherry's sixteenth birthday, she sits down in front of the mirror in her bedroom, like she does every day, to brush out her hair.

Annette never let her grow it out. A little girl's long hair can be a lot of work, and in retrospect, most of Sherry's interactions with Annette were mostly about Annette's time: ready-made meals, short conversations, inobtrusive hobbies. Minimal necessary involvement, so Annette could get back to the lab as soon as possible.

But Annette's four years gone now, and her current guardian, Derek Simmons, doesn't care one way or the other. So why not grow it out, if only to see how it looks.

Once she's done with her brush, Sherry picks up a rubber band and pulls her hair back into a ponytail, just so.

There's a collage of photos taped to the sides of her mirror, of her with Claire, and occasionally of Leon with Claire. She got the idea from an '80s movie. Sherry glances between one of the pictures of Claire and her image in the mirror, and all at once, realizes what she's been doing.

This is exactly what Claire does with her hair, too.

Claire's everything she was never going to be able to be: outgoing, extroverted, effortlessly beautiful. Even this small attempt at mimicry is, now that Sherry recognizes it for what it is, mortifying. If Claire were to notice, Sherry will be embarrassed enough to die on the spot.

(If she can. Die, that is. They aren't sure if the G-infection would let that happen, and nobody's in a hurry to find out.)

The next time she gets the chance, Sherry cuts most of her hair off.

* * *

 Claire shows up the next week for their semi-regular movie night, apologetic for missing the date, if not the spirit, of Sherry's birthday.

She rolls up to Derek Simmons's house and goes through the usual gauntlet of armed guards and identity checks. When Claire finally makes it through the front door, her beer's warmed up and the bag of tacos is room temperature.

DVDs have been a godsend. Every time she shows up, even though she's a few years into making these regular visits, the security team still treats Claire like she's here to stage a jailbreak. Anything she brings in is considered potential contraband, and they're really good at breaking videos. Movie night has occasionally turned into board game night, because the security guards handed back a handful of plastic shards and unspooled tape.

Claire's joked about it a couple of times, that she should've known better than to bring rentals with her after the first time it happened, but not like she really thinks it's funny.

* * *

If Claire had full operational discretion over the movie lineup, it'd be nothing but road movies and Westerns from the '70s. Sherry finally had to put her foot down on that, which is why they're watching a crusading-lawyers double feature tonight. She thinks it's fascinating, that they can wring this much action and drama out of people being melodramatic in a courtroom, but Claire's a little bored.

Halfway through, Sherry feels Claire's hand brush through the short, spiky blonde tangle that her hair's become, and Sherry freezes in place.

"I wasn't sure how I felt about this," Claire says, tousling what's left of Sherry's hair, "but I think it's growing on me."

The sensation of Claire's fingers against her scalp feels distractingly good, for no reason Sherry can consciously articulate. She wants to lean into it like a cat. Maybe turn off the movie and just do this for the next ninety minutes.

"I think I needed a change," Sherry says.

"You probably do," Claire says. She's two beers in, which means she's done for the day. She's got to drive back to her apartment in the city after this. "These four walls, all day every day. I'm amazed you don't go crazy."

It's not as bad as all that. Simmons is rarely here, despite maintaining and paying for this borderline palace on the outskirts of Washington DC. There's a staff that includes a cook, a couple of maids, a tutor, and a crew of security guards, all of whom are pleasant enough even if they're all at least twice Sherry's age. There's a small library on the first floor, the cable package has all the premium channels, and she's even got broadband Internet, although Sherry keeps running into weird custom filters.

(Search for "Raccoon City": zero results.)  
(Search for "William" or "Annette Birkin": zero relevant results.)  
(Search for "umbrella": zero results. Not even "Umbrella Corporation," just "umbrella." Not "parasol," though.)

Granted, it's all inmate privileges in a particularly luxurious prison, but Sherry kind of understands. Even if they were dead certain that her G-infection is going to stay stable, it's 2002, and the bioweapons black market is heating up. If she goes out and lives in the world like a normal person, she'd be a high-value target for anyone who wants a sample of the G-Virus. Leon's even said as much to her.

"I ought to see if they'll let me take you on a bike ride," Claire says.

Never mind. This movie sucks and this place is a silk cell.

"Nothing too crazy, but there are a few good long drives around here. If there weren't, I think I'd probably be in worse shape than I am."

"You look fine," Sherry says. "You always do."

"I have my good days and my bad," Claire says. "It always helps when I can get out on the road for a while."

They've talked about this a lot. Claire's tried therapy, off and on, but it's harder for her to find a fully compatible clinician than it is for most people. Even if she wasn't volunteering at TerraSave now, keeping her head on straight would be a full-time job.

(Sherry privately thinks that's dumb. Claire would be unthinkably better off if she dropped everything to go be a bike mechanic in a small town somewhere. The problem, as ever, is that too many of her loved ones are in the fight, which means she can't stay all the way out of it. She just cares too much, about everything.

(Which is also why Sherry survived Raccoon City at all.

(So Sherry stays quiet.)

"You think Simmons would notice if I borrowed you for an afternoon?" Claire asks.

"Definitely."

"Yeah, he'd know," Claire says. "I bet I could talk him into it."

Sherry has her doubts on that, but it's hard to tell Claire not to do things. The face-first, hell-for-leather attitude with which Claire got them both through Raccoon City wasn't a coping mechanism like Sherry initially thought it was. She's literally always like this.

"Aren't you ever scared?" Sherry asks aloud.

"About what?"

"Just... ever, at all. You never seem like you think you could fail. At anything." _And it's like it's all I ever think about._

Claire settles back into the cushions on Simmons's too-fancy, too-soft couch. "Life's just too short, I guess."

"Really?"

"There just isn't time for it. You can't worry about whether or not you're going to screw up," Claire says. "If you don't, great. If you do, then it's time you could be using on the next thing, you know? If I make mistakes, I make them, but I'm not going to slow down because I'm worried about making them." She smiles. "Motorcycle logic, I guess."

"My mom always called them 'donor-cycles.'"

"I've heard that before. But that's part of the fun. You can't ignore risks when you're on a bike. You just have to manage them as they come up."

Sherry has to think about that for a minute, so she shuts up, and Claire figures that means they're done. To Sherry's immediate disappointment, she stops running her hand through Sherry's hair, and goes back to not really watching the movie.

 _Motorcycle logic_ , Sherry thinks. There's no time to worry about consequences at sixty miles an hour. There's just what you can do right there in the moment.

It explains pretty much everything about Claire. Including why she's still alive.

* * *

"A ride in the country?" Derek Simmons says.

He's amused in a way that Sherry instantly dislikes, like it's a stupid thing for anyone to want. _Hey Derek, can I go play stickball on the freeway?_

"Yeah. Just for a while, with Claire," Sherry says.

"And when you fall off the motorcycle," Simmons says, "what then?"

"...it's not like it'll kill me."

"You're not who I'm concerned about."

He takes off his bifocals and puts down the top sheet of the paperwork in front of him. He's seated behind the big antique desk in his study, with a neat stack of manila folders in front of him, next to an expensive laptop that Sherry's never seen him using.

Simmons is working from home today and he's still dressed in a two-thousand-dollar suit, with a watch on his wrist that costs as much as a luxury sedan. Sherry met a few rich people back in the day, all of whom were Umbrella executives, but they were nothing like Simmons. He isn't showing off for her sake, or luxuriating in it, but instead, takes it all utterly for granted. He lives in a world where suits just cost this much. He's never done his own grocery shopping, owned off-the-rack clothes, or paid a bill. It's a level of disconnection from the world, a sheer level of aristocratic privilege, that makes him seem vaguely inhuman.

"For reasons that I hope would be obvious," Simmons says, "we've never exposed you to truly significant trauma. I wouldn't be concerned if you simply broke an arm or scraped a knee, but let's say you injure yourself badly enough that you're taken to the ER. What happens to the doctors and nurses who end up having to treat you?"

"I'm not infectious," Sherry says. It comes out sounding meek, so she gathers herself, pictures Claire, stands up a little straighter, and tries again. "You've said it yourself," she says. "I couldn't infect someone else with G even if I wanted to."

"And what if you mutate in response to your injuries," Simmons asks, "the way your father did?"

Sherry's next point of argument dies in her throat.

"Infection's a valid concern," Simmons says, just as if he didn't just say something incredibly dickheaded straight to her face, "but I'm primarily thinking about the chance of causing a new biohazard incident. Who would stop you? The FBC?" He snorts, amused by the thought.

"Claire would," Sherry says softly.

He actually seems to consider that.

"Be that as it may," Simmons says, "the answer is no." He picks up another folder, but then pauses and puts it down. "For now."

"But when?" Sherry asks.

"If you'd like," Simmons says, "we can see about being more... reckless, in your examinations. To make sure you'd remain in control, if the worst were to happen."

"All right," Sherry says, at once.

"I'll make the necessary arrangements."

* * *

"The worst part of it," Claire says, "is that he's probably not wrong."

"I know."

"I don't like this 'reckless examination' thing. Do you know what it'll involve?"

It's already started. So far, it's a lot of poking and prodding, sometimes from unexpected directions without warning. Once, one of the lab techs jumped out of a closet to scare her, so she'd have some adrenaline in her system when they drew blood for testing. Sherry smacked him in the face with a steel exam tray.

"Just some more of what they're already doing," Sherry says. It's a good thing this is a phone call, because it makes it easier to fake nonchalance. If Claire was actually in the room, she'd see how apprehensive Sherry actually is about this. "Whatever. The moment they clear me for it..."

Claire's quiet for a second.

"They're probably recording this conversation right now, aren't they," she says.

"Yeah," Sherry says.

It's a feeling she's had for a while, that they're probably collecting data on her all the time, whether they say they are or not. Sherry's never found a bug or a hidden camera, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Simmons can  _probably_ afford people who are better at espionage stuff than a sheltered sixteen-year-old girl.

"All right. Don't let them do anything really bad, all right?"

"I won't."

* * *

Sherry doesn't like Carla.

Years later, thinking about it from the perspective of distance, she'll realize that much of it wasn't Carla's fault. She's a blonde, brilliant scientist, which can't help but remind Sherry of Annette. There's a lot of transferred anger here.

The rest of the dislike, however, is earned. Carla's plain old mean. She works for some private research foundation of Simmons's; whenever Sherry's seen her and Simmons in the same room, he's treated Carla like a particularly obedient dog, and she's either into that or she's just too infatuated with him to notice it's what he's doing. Carla is way too young to be as well-regarded a geneticist as she is, has the unhealthy pallor of someone who spends all her time indoors, and has no social skills whatsoever.

So when Carla walks into the examination room, clipboard in hand, Sherry already knows it's going to be a bad day.

"So," Carla says, instead of hello, "I've just been told that you actually volunteered for this new round of testing, for this last couple of years, because of 'Claire.'"

"I'm doing it so I can be cleared to leave," Sherry says.

"With Claire."

"Yes," Sherry says. "With Claire."

"You know," Carla says, looking over her notes, "I've got friends."

Sherry doubts that very much. Carla might have a few incidental hangers-on who follow her around, remoras to her hammerhead shark, but friends? There's no way. Carla can't possibly know how.

"And I wouldn't go through half of this for the chance to spend an afternoon with them," Carla says. "Not even a quarter."

"Where are you going with this?"

"I'm wondering if this 'Claire,'" Carla says, "is really just a 'friend.' Maybe you've got a little crush on her, you think?"

"She's--"

Sherry stops herself. She knows Carla's hoping to get a furious denial, but the question slips right past her guard.

Somehow, she's never considered it, even with all the time she spends thinking about Claire. When she's in a good enough mood to daydream about what happens when she's finally out of here, Claire's never not in that picture. She's even chided herself for being weird and obsessed, but had passed it off as natural. Claire saved her life, she's her only real friend, and is maybe the first person Sherry ever met, the only person at all, who cares about her for her.

 _Maybe I'm_ not _obsessed,_ Sherry thinks. _Maybe I actually am--_

Carla suddenly buries a scalpel in Sherry's upper arm, turning with the motion to put most of her upper body behind the thrust. The blade's an inch deep in Sherry's triceps before she registers that Carla's moved.

She's never been outright stabbed before, and thinks she might be in shock; it feels like it's happening to somebody else, somewhere else. Even when Carla pulls the scalpel out, Sherry expects agony and gets sort of a dull ache.

Sherry brings her other hand up to cover the wound, like she thinks a normal person would, but Carla catches her wrist. Together, they watch the injury knit itself up, scab over, then disappear, over the course of about five minutes. Once Carla wipes away the thin smear of blood, there isn't even a scar.

"Why did you do that?" Sherry asks quietly.

"To see if an unexpected threat would get an unexpected reaction," Carla says, unashamed. "I almost went for your neck instead." She smirks, and puts the bloody scalpel blade into a specimen jar.

Claire's shown Sherry how to throw a punch. The trick, Claire says, is to not actually use your knuckles if you can help it. Hit with the side or heel of your hand, or your elbow. Finger bones are a lot more fragile than movies make them look, and it's easy to do more damage to yourself than you did to whoever you're hitting.

That advice has leaped immediately to mind, because Sherry and Carla are both short, but Carla's also scrawny, as if she's skipped a lot of meals in her life. The closest security guard's a few rooms away. Sherry could beat Carla like a kettle drum for a good five minutes before anyone arrived to stop her.

But Simmons would probably object, and Sherry is sure that he's already looking for a reason to cancel the bike trip. Simmons doesn't necessarily care whether or not Sherry's happy, just that she's not being weaponized, and it'd probably screw up some of his plans if his pet scientist was in the hospital.

With an effort, Sherry stops making a fist.

"Is that all you wanted?" she asks.

"Of course not," Carla says, and unwraps a syringe.

* * *

A little over a week later, Sherry comes down the stairs to the foyer, half-reading a magazine, and is surprised to see Claire for the first time in a while. She's is in the middle of a murmured conversation with Simmons, who looks annoyed.

"Claire?" Sherry asks.

"Hey," Claire says. Her hair's tucked up on top of her head, wound around a couple of pencils. She's dressed in head-to-toe bike leathers, with ballistic plates at the elbows and knees, with her helmet under one arm.

Her hair is bound up on top of her head with a couple of pencils, and coming off a rush-hour bike ride from DC to here, she looks a little worse for wear. Like always, she's barely put any effort into her appearance at all. Even the bike suit is all function, no style.

But her eyes are still a striking shade of blue even from all the way over here, her voice sounds a little like music, and just being in the same room as Claire still makes Sherry feel like somehow, despite all this other bullshit, everything's going to be okay.

Realization hits her all at once, and Sherry has to sit down heavily on the closest step.

_Carla was right._

It's _incredibly_ annoying.

"Derek and I," Claire says, "were just talking about the whole bike trip idea."

"A ride," Simmons says at once, "not a trip."

"Yeah, that," Claire says. "I was talking about the run from here to Highland and back. It's a couple of hundred miles."

"Counting your return trip," Simmons says, "that's four hundred. That's a full day."

"Well, yeah."

"Unacceptable," Simmons says. "I don't think either of you appreciate just how much danger Sherry is in at any given time, or how hard I work to keep her location a secret."

"If someone manages to find her, Derek," Claire says, "I can handle it."

"She can," Sherry says quietly.

"She's not a damsel in a tower, and neither am I."

"No," Simmons says. He folds his arms and looks at Claire, as if he's only now deigning to actually consider her as an equal participant in the conversation. "I suppose you are not."

"So I can go?" Sherry asks, daring to get excited.

"You've been jerking her, us, around about it for two years," Claire says. "Either she can or she can't, but either way, stop using it as bait on a string."

Part of Simmons's mouth quirks up in what, in a warm-blooded organism, might be a smile.

"I was only concerned about her safety," he says, "and that of the people around her. Truly."

"I mean," Sherry says, instantly leaping into the diplomatic position, "you aren't wrong."

"You aren't," Claire says. "You're just being an asshole about it."

Sherry glances sharply at Simmons. It has to have been a while since anyone's spoken like this to him. Claire might have just thrown away the game.

Instead, Simmons's expression is studiously neutral. After a moment, he slowly shakes his head.

"You... may have a point," Simmons says. "I suppose one day away from here isn't necessarily a problem. It might even help, as long as you two and I are the only ones who know where you'll be."

"I haven't told anyone," Claire says.

"Who would I tell?" Sherry asks.

"Then," Simmons says, "I suppose you may as well schedule a trip."

* * *

 Sherry's wrapped in a battered leather jacket Claire gave her, tough and scarred by at least one bad fall, with one sleeve held on by fossilized layers of old electrical tape. It's probably a boy's coat, but it fits Sherry almost perfectly. Her helmet has a bunch of vinyl band-logo stickers all over the sides and smells like Claire's shampoo.

The road they're on takes them southwest from DC, past a lot of farms and through two national parks. The weather's actually awful for this; the sky's overcast and there's an occasional fitful shower of rain, right as autumn is threatening to turn into winter. Claire doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

Sherry has her arms wrapped tightly around Claire's waist. Even if they weren't both wearing helmets, the bike's too loud for conversation. It's just them, the engine's thrum, and the road, which Claire clearly knows by heart.

After a couple of hours, Sherry has to admit that she's not getting a lot out of this. There's something meditative for Claire about being on her bike, and now Sherry knows for sure that she'll never feel the same way about it.

But she can't be bored. She's out in the world for the first time in years, the next best thing to free, with Claire in her arms. Sort of.

It's perfect.

* * *

 "We're ships in the night," Claire says.

She had sort of a crazy picnic lunch in one of the bags on her bike: teriyaki jerky, wax-covered hard cheese, a sleeve of half-pulverized crackers, a big bag of chocolate-covered raisins, four bottles of spring water. Sherry suspects Claire just grabbed everything she already had that would survive the bike trip. Spread out across a picnic table like this, it kind of looks like they broke into a vending machine.

"He just got back from this thing, actually," Claire says. "Did you hear about Ashley Graham?"

"Yeah, of course." It's the news event of 2004. The president's pretty blonde daughter got kidnapped, right from under the Secret Service's nose. No newspaper or TV show has wanted to talk about much of anything else for a couple of months.

"Leon found her and brought her back."

"Really?" Sherry asks.

"Yeah," Claire says. "He hasn't told me the whole story, but he made it sound like a rough time." She looks at a cracker without eating it. "I should've asked him to come along for this. He could use a break."

"Next time," Sherry says around a mouthful of raisins. "I really want to see him. And you."

"I'll see what I can do. Does he still call you?"

"It's usually email now, but yeah. I guess if he was out of the country, that explains why it's been a while."

"Yeah. They sent him to check on this thing in the middle of nowhere, he said, and it turned out to be exactly where he needed to be." Claire drinks some water. "He's acting like he's totally fine."

"Which means he isn't," Sherry murmurs.

"Yeah."

"But you two still aren't together."

"No, he's always out trying to save the world," Claire says, "and so am I." She reaches out and tousles Sherry's hair. "I know that disappoints you."

"...sort of," Sherry says.

She's always thought Leon and Claire made sense together, ever since the first time she saw them both at once. There's chemistry there, which has consistently come in a distant second to whatever else one or both of them felt like they needed to be doing.

When she was younger, Sherry was annoyed that they never seemed to even try to make it work. Right now, though, it's almost a relief.

"Are you seeing anybody?" she asks.

"Nope." Claire pinches a bit of cheese off the end of what's left of the wedge. "I mean, I went on a couple of dates a while ago, but..."

She doesn't have to finish the sentence. They've talked about this before. It's hard for Claire to connect with people who don't already know and appreciate what she's been through, and that's a tall order. Even a lot of her co-workers at TerraSave assume that some or all of what they've heard about her is made up.

"Worried about me?" Claire asks, teasing.

"Not... exactly," Sherry says.

She's having a complicated reaction right now. She's free and out in the world for the first time in six years, alone with Claire. It's been a great day, everything she's been dreaming it'd be for the last two years.

There isn't a soul in sight besides the two of them.

This, Sherry thinks, would be a great time to kiss her.

But no, that'd be weird. Super weird. People don't just randomly kiss in real life. It's even sketchy in movies. You have to build up to it, or ask, or at least make your intentions clear first. Otherwise it's just invasive.

_...is Claire even into girls?_

_Am_ I _even into girls, or am I just into Claire?_

"Good. You shouldn't worry," Claire says, oblivious to the multiple interlocking emotional crises happening on the other side of the picnic table. "I haven't surrendered yet."

"Huh?"

"No cats," she says. "Not even one. If I get a cat, that's me committing to permanent singlehood forever."

"Cats are all right," Sherry says, babbling.

Claire wrinkles her nose. "I'm still way more of a dog person. If I was home more often, I'd have at least two."

"...wait, even now?"

"Weirdly, yeah. I mean, it's not like any of those zombies back in Raccoon were golden retrievers." Claire frowns. "And I hope I never see one of those."

"Me too," Sherry says.

* * *

 The following spring, Sherry's sleeping in late one morning when the phone rings. It's her personal line, which only Claire, Leon, and Simmons ever call, which makes it a surprise to hear a male voice she doesn't know.

"Sherry Birkin?"

"This is she."

"Hey, I have a message for you. Claire says not to worry. She's okay."

"...thanks?"

He chuckles. "I guess you didn't hear about Harvardville yet," the man says. "There was an outbreak at the airport. T-Virus. The whole place is trashed."

Sherry sits up in bed so fast that she nearly drops the handset. "Is she--?"

"She's totally okay. She's stuck in quarantine, though, until the doctors can clear her to leave, so she had me pass it on."

"Thank you so much," Sherry says, "whoever you are."

"Neil."

"Thanks, Neil."

"No problem. I guess you two are close, huh?"

"Yeah," Sherry says. "Very."

* * *

 "Sorry it took me so long to stop by," Claire says.

Sherry accepts the bike helmet she's offering.

"I was a person of interest in Ron Davis's death for a while," she says, and gets a little rueful smirk. "Turns out when you smack a senator in full view of a hundred people, and he turns up dead..."

"I get it," Sherry says.

She's trying to play it cool, but Claire sees through it instantly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Sherry says. "No. Kind of." She checks around herself, looking for incidental members of Simmons's staff, and finds none. "Is there somewhere where we could talk?"

* * *

 Claire obviously doesn't spend a lot of time in, or on, her apartment. All the furniture is cheap particle-board megastore stuff, except the thrift-shop couch in the living room. When she walks in, she opens a couple of windows to air out the stale, old-Chinese-food smell from the kitchen, then lights an incense stick anyway.

"Sorry," Claire says. "I'm almost never here."

"It's fine," Sherry says.

She sits down on the closest end of the couch, trying to pick a place to start.

"What's wrong?" Claire asks.

_Oh, to hell with it. Just open your mouth and see what falls out--_

"I've been trying to figure it out for years," Sherry says. "It's all jumbled up in my head. Sometimes I thought I wanted to be you, or at least be like you. Other times... most of the time..." She swallows hard. "I want to be with you."

Claire starts to say something, then thinks twice about it.

"I love you, Claire," Sherry says. "I think I have for a while, and when I found out about Harvardville, all I could think was that I never actually said that to you. I love you."

"...romantically," Claire says.

"Yes."

"...huh."

Claire settles back into the couch. She's got an expression on her face like Sherry just asked her to do long division in her head.

Which isn't a great reaction, but at least it's not anger.

"I should've said something way before now," Sherry says. "I almost did during that first bike trip, when we were having lunch."

"I do remember thinking that was kind of a weird conversation," Claire says. "It's been that long?"

"Huh? Oh. I mean... longer. A couple of years now."

"Okay."

"Oh, God," Sherry says. "I ruined everything, didn't I?"

"Sweetie, no," Claire says. She slides across the couch and gathers Sherry into a one-armed hug. "I'm not upset. I'm just surprised."

Which sounds an awful lot like "no." Sherry buries her face in Claire's shoulder, below her collarbone, and tries not to cry.

* * *

 "Feel any better?"

Sherry comes out of the bathroom wiping her face with a hand towel, then flops back down on the couch next to Claire. "A little."

Claire opens a bottle of beer with her pocketknife and has a sip.

"I screwed up," Sherry says.

"Of course not. I'm just... processing." Claire holds the bottle up to watch light pass through it. "I'm wondering what I missed, or what I did."

"You didn't do anything," Sherry says. "Except be you."

"I guess." Claire glances at her to make eye contact. "You've been holding this in for a while."

"Yeah."

"And I had no idea." She shakes her head. "I need to apologize to a couple of people. I've been making fun for them for being dense, but here I am."

"I was hoping it wasn't obvious, because I didn't... I wasn't sure."

"Now you are?"

"...I think so," Sherry says, and has to look down. "I mean, as much as I can be, with everything."

Claire finishes her beer, gets up, and comes back with a fresh bottle. She drinks some, with that same distant expression on her face.

"It breaks my heart," Claire says, "how many people in your life have just pushed you aside. When I found out about Simmons, I knew that somebody had to be in your corner, for your sake. And I decided I was elected."

"Claire, I--"

"Because you deserve somebody in your life who actually cares about you," Claire says. "Almost everybody else seems to want to throw you in a drawer until they need you for something."

"Yeah."

"And I do care, Sherry. Since the moment we met, I've wanted to see how you'd turn out. You'd have every right in the world to be this angry, bitter hate-ball, but... you've still got such a good heart, somehow."

"Because of you," Sherry says quietly. "And Leon, but mostly you."

"I've just tried to be there for you," Claire says. "Not enough, but as much as I can."

"That's a lot."

"It's not as much as I'd have liked. But most of it's you, Sherry."

Sherry wants to protest that, but Claire's in full can't-be-budged on this. Sherry knows the signs by now.

"I wanted to be here for you, to help you figure yourself out," Claire says. "I never saw this coming, though."

"Neither did I," Sherry says softly.

Claire nods. "What do you want to do now?"

_Leave town tonight, change our names, live by our wits, never stop running. Never be apart again._

"I hadn't gotten there yet," Sherry says. "It was just important that I finally tell you."

"Okay."

"And I get it," Sherry says. "You don't feel the same way."

"I wouldn't go _that_ far," Claire says.

Sherry forgets to breathe for a second.

"But I don't know if it's the best thing for you in the long run," she says, "for, God, a hundred different reasons. I know that if our positions were reversed, I'd only get pissed off if you told me that I didn't know what I actually wanted, but..."

"Uh, yeah."

Claire reaches over to put her hand on Sherry's cheek. "You get what I'm saying, though, right?"

"I do," Sherry says, and covers Claire's hand with hers. "But... I've been asking myself about this for a long time. I'm as sure as I can be. If it is a mistake," she has to pause to swallow, "I want to make it."

"Okay."

"Claire?"

"Yes?"

"Could I kiss you?"

She blurts it out so quickly that it sounds like there weren't spaces between the words. Claire hesitates for a second, long enough for Sherry's mind to start filling in the gaps, then slowly smiles at her.

"Come here," Claire says, and Sherry flings herself across the couch.

She's rarely been able to let herself even dream about this moment, and now that it's here, nervous adrenaline and indecision make her freeze up in Claire's arms. Claire ends up having to make the next move, rearranging herself opposite Sherry, until Sherry finally remembers the point of this and leans forward into the kiss.

It's the first real one she's ever had. She can taste lip gloss and a hint of beer on Claire's lips, she makes a little closed-mouth moan without meaning to, and every time she feels Claire move against her, Sherry can't help but shudder. It's at once more than she thought it'd be, and less than she wants.

Claire's the one to break it off, after what might have been a long time.

"Okay," Claire says, her voice hoarse. "I guess you did know what you wanted."

"Huh?"

"I was kind of expecting you to back off."

"I thought you'd probably stop me if I went too far."

Claire has to laugh, and lets her forehead lean against Sherry's. "Look," Claire says, "I'm going to promise you something."

"What?"

"I will always be your friend," she says. "No matter what. Whatever happens with this. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Then," Claire says, "I guess we'll figure the rest out as we go."

"Same as always," Sherry says.

"Yeah."


End file.
